


to follow you back home

by isoneph



Category: Momoland (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Kinda, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 19:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15103163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoneph/pseuds/isoneph
Summary: Yeonwoo grows up with people who are by her side, through everything, but she's afraid of losing one person the most.





	to follow you back home

_and I just think you should, think you should know_  
_that nothing safe is worth the drive_  
_and I will_ _follow you, follow you home_

  
  
-

  
  
Yeonwoo is ten when it happens.  
  
She’s inside the classroom, spending time indoors as punishment for talking in class. She doodles aimlessly at her finished hundred handwritten words, bearing the name of her crime in sloppy graphite lettering.  
  
“Go,” the teacher says suddenly, taking the paper from her. “It’s enough. Go play.”  
  
Yeonwoo does little to stop herself from darting out of the classroom, little legs carrying her down the hallway, past the water fountain, and down the stairwell. She’s on the last flight when the toe of her shoe catches on the edge of the step, sending her tumbling into the girl she was behind.  
  
Yeonwoo braces herself for the fall, prepares the apology and waits for the ground to meet her.

Except it doesn’t. 

The girl stumbles a little, but stays standing with a firm grip on Yeonwoo’s wrist. Her knees buckle slightly from the sudden weight.  
  
Yeonwoo says nothing, only pants and gasps for air from her sprint. A beat later, she speaks.  
  
“T-thanks.”  
  
“You shouldn’t be playing on the stairs, Dabin,” the girl answers sternly. She even uses her real name, probably learning that from the teachers when they scold Yeonwoo. Being the class clown and all.  
  
“Was not,” Yeonwoo pouts, “I’m only hurrying.”  
  
“Then stop,” the girl says. Yeonwoo squints at the shiny nametag pinned to the front of her blazer. _Lee Ahin. Three years below her._  
  
“Walk with me so you don’t fall again.” She lets go of Yeonwoo, who’s standing a step behind her.  
  
Yeonwoo follows, even though she doesn’t take orders from anyone, not the teacher or her mom, or the band of mean old girls who are a grade above her. And definitely not from someone who’s younger. But she does anyways, half out of kindness and half just because it’s easier.  
  
That day at lunch, she sits next to Ahin and splits her favorite snacks with her. She’s a new student at the school, so she doesn’t have many friends. Yeonwoo feels better, being able to help out someone.  
  
So maybe this whole friends thing isn’t so bad after all.

 

-  
  
  
Yeonwoo is eleven when the first string appears. She feels it before she sees it though, yanking almost roughly against her palm.  
  
It’s a brilliant green, like the leaf of a big oak tree in the summer, vibrant and overflowing with life. She bends her index finger, testing the feel out. It’s loose, but affirmative at the same time. She tugs back.  
  
The pull is so strong this time, that it shoots her arm out, extending it straight in front of her.  
  
She gulps, wheeling her bike out of its place in the racks, and looks up at where it bends past the school building, out of sight. Yeonwoo throws one leg over, planting her foot on the pedal and soon enough, she’s racing down the sidewalk at top speed. The string follows her way home, so when she stops in front of her house, breath catching in her chest, its source is at the end of the cul-de-sac.  
  
Whoever it is, they're demanding already.  
  
Yeonwoo approaches the house slowly, because it’s where the new neighbors moved in and she’s not totally sure what the string means after all. As she gets closer, she sees a girl a few years younger than her standing in the garage, fist balled, giving the string a firm yank. Yeonwoo is almost annoyed at this point, because her arm hurts and she’s tired from all that speeding.  
  
“Hurry up!” The girl chirps. “I’m Daisy.”  


-  
  
  
Her first encounter with Daisy turns into a friendship that shouldn't even be possible. Daisy is a few grades below her, but so is Ahin and they both manage to sneak over to the upper grades' side of the cafeteria every day to meet with her, anyways.  
  
Ahin can't see their string, but she knows it's there when Yeonwoo tells her so. They've got a whole year of knowing each other as opposed to Daisy's three days, but the youngest is determined to make it all work.  
  
She asks Ahin first, through bites of her lunch. “Do you have any strings?”  
  
“No,” she responds, and Yeonwoo notices that her words are a little harsher than usual, without the light, cheery tone that's usually there. _Must be something else going on,_ she thinks.  
  
“That's okay. Mom told me that strings don't mean anything.” Daisy chews thoughtfully, and the silence between the three of them is masked by the general chatter of the cafeteria. “Unless-”  
  
Yeonwoo interrupts. “Unless it's the red one,” she exclaims.  
  
Ahin wrinkles her nose. “What? But you can only get that one after you turn eighteen.” There's a shudder. That's too far away.  
  
“Yeah,” Daisy says. “But it's the most important one out of all of them, even.” Ahin juts out her chin at that.  
  
“No, people don't have to follow any of their strings if they don't want to. People get married to people who aren't their red strings all the time.”  
  
The conversation from there devolves into a bunch of laughter and yelps of _ew, gross_ at the mention of the person on the other end of their future red strings. At the end of lunch, Yeonwoo's laughing so hard it hurts and she's glad that string or not, Ahin and Daisy are her friends.  
  
For good.  


-

  
  
Yeonwoo's string bothers her early on a Sunday morning, when she's still warm and fuzzy with sleep, refusing to move from her spot in bed.  
  
Until the green string looped around her index finger gives her a sharp tug, jerking her upright in bed.  
  
Confused, she looks at the string, pulled taut, passing under the crack in her door. Daisy has something urgent to say, clearly, so she trapeizes down the stairs carefully, still in her pajamas, and walks to the end of the street to see Daisy on her front porch.  
  
“What’s up?” Yeonwoo’s voice cracks from disuse. “Why so early?”  
  
Daisy doesn’t say anything, eyes trained on her right hand, curling her ring finger at nothing. Yeonwoo suddenly understands.  
  
“What color is it?”  
  
“Blue,” Daisy sighs, looking up at the foggy morning sky. “They’re not awake yet, even when I do this.” She traps her finger and clenches her fist as tight as possible, the same way she does when she wants to bother Yeonwoo and yank her arm around.  
  
“Must be a deep sleeper. But we don’t know anyone like that,” she says, yawning. “Where does it go?”  
  
“Over the hill. I can’t see anything past it.” Daisy drops her arm limply by her side.  


-

  
It turns out that the person on the other end of the string is Lee Joowon, the younger class’s funniest girl. At school, Joowon joins their little clan, all pigtails and bright smiles and Yeonwoo is sad to let it go when she gets to middle school without them. They still hang out, all four of them outside of school at Daisy’s house, but they know that Yeonwoo being older only means that she’s going to high school first, leaving them behind again.  
  
It hurts, but sometimes in the middle of a boring lecture when she’s about to fall asleep, she feels a tug on her green string and knows that Daisy’s thinking about her. She can only hope that Joowon and Ahin are taking care of each other, too.  
  
Especially Ahin.  
  
Yeonwoo admits that Ahin was first, first best friend and because of that, she’s got a little soft spot in her heart where she’ll remain. She knows nearly everything about the girl, and they’re happy as can be even with the age gap and no string.  
  
“When we get older, it won’t matter at all,” Ahin chirps, sitting in the swing beside Yeonwoo. She looks at her, small smile playing at the corners of her lips and Yeonwoo feels her heart jump just slightly.  
  
“Yeah,” she says, “Promise we’ll get there?” Yeonwoo extends her right hand, and her hand meets Ahin’s in a firm, warm grasp.  
  
The younger girl grins. “Yeah.”  


-

  
  
When Yeonwoo turns fourteen, it starts to go downhill.  
  
She’s in her last year of middle school when Joowon, Daisy, and Ahin are just getting in. She makes new friends, Jiyeon and Hyebin, and they’re all great together, an untied bunch except for Yeonwoo’s yellow string coming to belong to a girl named Taeha.  
  
It’s a simple story, actually. Yeonwoo and Taeha end up sitting next to each other at promotion rehearsal, and one second later their pinky fingers are connected with a length of yarn the color of sunny days and lemonade.  
  
Yeonwoo starts to get embarrassed when she’s around her elementary school friends when she wouldn’t have been before. Even when they’re sharing old jokes and laughing their heads off, the oldest girl holds back a little because of her reputation.  
  
Her middle school friends, namely Jiyeon (who now wants to go by Jane), Hyebin, and Taeha, don’t say much about Yeonwoo hanging out with them.  
  
“Besides,” Jane says, stealing fries from Yeonwoo’s plate, “they’re your friends too. Doesn’t matter if they’re a little younger.”  
  
When they all enter high school, her worlds collide and it’s a mix of both her lives.  
  
Joowon’s on the dance team with her and the rest. Daisy joins her in English, but Ahin doesn’t have any shared time with her. But they make up for it, they try, but it isn’t the same as the old days.  
  
Yeonwoo’s conscience tells her that their best days are behind her, but she ignores it and spends time with them all. Especially Ahin.

 

-

  
Movie nights are just the two of them, with a bad drama and snacks and Yeonwoo’s parents out for the time being.  


Ahin is fourteen and Yeonwoo is seventeen.  
  
  
“I’m going to school in China,” Ahin says, breaking the silence between scenes of the drama.  
  
Yeonwoo doesn’t think she hears her correctly. “Huh?”  
  
“Next month. I’m going to boarding school in China.” Ahin looks right at her with that transparent look, the same one from almost eight years ago that meant she wasn’t joking. “Thought you should know...”  
  
Yeonwoo’s mind is blank. That she has a reputation for, because usually she can’t find the right things to say and it’s even worse now.  
  
“But I’m graduating next year,” Yeonwoo says numbly, “we’re supposed to be together, all of us... it’s literally the middle of the year, Ahin.”  
  
Ahin’s voice is soft, attempting to wash over Yeonwoo’s nerves and this time, it doesn’t really work. Even as the younger of the two, she knows her place in her best friend’s life perfectly.  
  
“I know. But it’s a really special scholarship.” She sighs, searching for Yeonwoo’s hand, but the older girl retracts it. The temperature in the room drops below freezing, and Yeonwoo feels something inside her break.  
  
“I’m happy for you, but it still means you’re leaving us. Joowon, Daisy, my senior friends. Me,” Yeonwoo sniffles. The look on Ahin’s face breaks her heart neatly into two, one of desperation and fear and sadness because this is something permanent.  
  
She won’t graduate with Daisy and Joowon, won’t go to the same college as them and they’re all starting to realize that their time is running out. Yeonwoo is supposed to graduate next year, they know that much. She’s leaving first.  
  
“I wish we were tied,” Ahin mumbles, out of the blue. “I’ve wished we were tied since elementary school.”  
  
Yeonwoo hugs her knees, looking down at the space between them on her bed. “Me too. I know it doesn’t mean much, but-”  
  
“It tells you something special,” Ahin says, and Yeonwoo’s heart is heavy and afflicted with a certain feeling that she can’t place, and it’s all longing and melancoly that weighs her down with the thought of Ahin leaving her life.  
  
But Yeonwoo says nothing.  


-

  
  
The last six months of school pass by in a blur. It’s like one big hole, loss without Ahin, and everyone feels it, even Daisy and Taeha. Her graduation with Jane and Hyebin comes and goes, too, and acceptance letters from different arts colleges come pouring in from her. She’s due to attend one come the fall.  
  
And yet, Ahin is gone.  
  
August comes too, which means that her birthday comes. Her eighteenth. She hopes for absolutely nothing, stepping on eggshells around the elephant in the room.  
  
Over text, Jane breaks the ice.  
  
_red string?_ Blunt, as usual coming from her.  
  
Yeonwoo looks at her hand. Nothing, just yellow and green like it has been for the past few years.  
  
_no maybe soon though_  
  
Hyebin and Taeha butt in.  
  
_dabin is a lonerrr_  
  
_one of these days! cheer up!_ And a little affirmative tug from her yellow string. Yeonwoo smiles a little, but can't help but to feel that something is missing.  


-

  
  
In the week before her junior year of college, she’s moping and packing boxes to move into her dorm. Yeonwoo has the house to herself when her parents work, and she’s sleepy from the heat and dance practice from the morning.  
  
She slumps over in a chair by the kitchen, eyelids fluttering shut every now and then, head lolling over. She’s about to get up and into the shower when her index finger is yanked.  
  
Yoo Jungahn never knows how to be gentle, but this means “do you have time to talk?”  
  
They’re on Daisy’s porch this time around, summer turning into fall on a cool September evening.  
  
“It’s Ahin’s birthday today,” Daisy says, swirling the ice cubes in her cup. Her and Joowon are in their final year of school. Time flies fast, Yeonwoo being away from home so often that summers and breaks are the only times she can talk to the girls, besides video chats and text but it’s just not the same. And they all feel that.  
  
“I know. Hope she gets that stuff in the mail I sent her a few weeks ago.”  
  
Contact with Ahin is a lot more limited than the rest, and she hardly ever comes back from China at the same time as Yeonwoo’s breaks. Sometimes she doesn’t come back at all.  
  
“I mean, it's her happy eighteenth. Adult stuff and all that.”  
  
  
  
Yeonwoo’s trying to find her car, when she feels resistance from her hand, like it’s being trapped against something. She looks down, annoyed, because she needs to get to the rehearsal and midterms are in a few days and she can’t deal with another ring stuck in this stupid jacket-  
  
She gasps and drops her keys, feeling her heart rate quicken until it’s pounding against her ribs.  
  
The red string is there. It’s a bright, vibrant blood red that shines in the midday light and stretches taut as far as she can see down the road, tied perfectly to her middle finger. This isn’t something that can wait. She texts Nayun, her dance team friend _feeling kinda sick this morning didn’t go to class can’t make practice :(_  
  
Then she hops in her car and floors it, following the string, going down the highway, and it takes her a total of one hour until she’s reached the seawall. Her GPS tells her Jeju.  
  
She fishes some coins out and pays for the parking, running down the sidewalk to where the string wraps around the touristy shops and boardwalk attractions. Yeonwoo checks the time. It’s been two hours, and the string shows no sign of stopping.  
  
Who is it? Is it a surfer? A foreigner tourist, a shop employee? Just some random person driving past?  
  
But her string leads to the same place. Far out of sight.  
  
Yeonwoo weaves through people, takes off her shoes hurriedly, jumping off the boardwalk and running at full speed along the sand. She chases after the string, stretched along the coastline for blocks until she’s far from where she started, around the corner and out of breath.  
  
When she’s around the bend, she gets her answer.  
  
The string stretches out right ahead of her, a waist-high path leading her directly over the open sea.  
  
Trembling, she takes out her phone and opens the compass.  
  
It points southwest, but god knows who could be out that way. Or how far away they are.  
  
And she’s near tears, because she’s never let this bother her before, the fact that her string didn’t show up at eighteen, not nineteen or even twenty. And she gets it, some people don’t even get red strings but this is a fate worse than death, knowing that her soulmate is out there, so close yet so far away.  
  
  
  
_bin_da: what’s southwest from korea_  
  
_JooE: madagascar_  
_indonesia_  
_Daisy: maybe it wraps around the world and they’re in europe idk_  
  
  
  
She gives the red string a little tug sometimes. But she doesn't get one back in response.  
  
Yeonwoo'll sometimes feel the line go taut, as if her soulmate is caught in some dilemma, whether to make contact or hold back. Yeonwoo wishes there was a way to communicate besides ambiguous string-pulling, but this is the way it works.   
  
  
  
The snow falls silently, packing the world into a cocoon of white, quiet and pristine and Yeonwoo thinks that's her favorite part of the holidays. She walks through the town square, sees the ice rink and the happy couples, families teaching their little kids to skate, and she thinks, _fuck it._  
  
Yeonwoo skates around aimlessly, she isn't really good but she doesn't fall down and she'll take that. They don't have half sizes, so she makes do with a pair that's a little too big. That's fine, because all she wants to do is get lost in her thoughts a little bit. Yeonwoo glances down at her hand and all the slack strings.  
  
Yellow belongs to Taeha, who's busy looking after her little cousins and wrapping presents.  
  
Green belongs to Daisy, who's back home in Canada for the holidays.  
  
She can't help but to sigh, looking at the red string. Yeonwoo could set out on a journey, a trip to find her soulmate, but she's starting to think that maybe letting things happen by themselves is the best—  
  
  
Fact 1: She's sent flying, off balance, because of a combination of tripping over her own feet and surprise.  
  
Fact 2: Yeonwoo trips and faceplants into the ice.  
  
Fact 3: While she's laying there, she realizes that her red string is tugging harshly, so she pushes herself up and looks around.  
  
Fact 4: Her heart stops right in the middle of her chest, because Ahin is standing at the other edge of the rink, and she's coming over right now. Her red string is tied on her ring finger.  
  
Fact 5: Ahin didn't know that Yeonwoo was on the other side of her string. She comes back to Korea in an attempt to surprise her, but her plan is ruined.  
  
Fact 6: Ahin is beautiful. She's lovely and the light of her life and her best friend and Yeonwoo wants nothing more than to tell her.  
  
Fact 7: She doesn't get the chance to do that though, because their first kiss kinda gets in the way.  


 

When they pull back, Yeonwoo feels like she could cry. Because Ahin came back for her, even if she had no idea about it.  
  
“I'm back now,” Ahin whispers, hidden away in Yeonwoo's arms, and they both know that following your way back home is the only way that's worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! this is something i wrote on impulse, abandoned, found again, and finished.
> 
> twt: @cosmicfiavor


End file.
